Gregory picked up half a dozen pieces of various sizes and examined them. “Their assay was about right, I should think,” he said. “Looks like good low grade ore, but not too good. It will do no harm to assay it myself, however,” and he dropped the sample into the pocket of his coat. Suddenly he gave a startled exclamation, and Mark saw his nostrils dilate, his nose almost point, as he darted forward and kicked aside a heap of loosely piled quartz. Then he knelt down and lifted out several lumps of greyish-black ore.
“What is it?” asked Mark curiously, and feeling something of the excitement of the hunter whose gun is trained on a bear. “D’you mean they’ve found copper glance?”
“At a depth of sixty feet? Not exactly. This is a basic igneous rock called pyroxenite, that may not be rich in gold but is more than likely to be—particularly as our friends have hidden it so carefully and said nothing about it. It may assay anywhere from ten dollars a ton to five hundred. I’m going down.”
The shaft was inclined, four by eight, and timbered with lagging. Gregory lit the candle he had brought and descended the ladder. He remained below about ten minutes; when he returned to the surface he was excited and triumphant.
“They’ve begun to drift on the vein,” he announced. “They’ve gone about three feet—it must have been then they learned the history of the claim. It’s pyroxenite all right, every inch of it.”
“Well, damn them!” said Mark.
“They can’t plead that they didn’t recognise the ore, uncommon as it is, because they began to drift the moment they struck the vein. It dips toward the ranch,” he added abruptly.
Mark whistled. “It’s pretty close. That would be a kettle of fish—if it apexed on your land! Lawsuit. Friendship of a lifetime broken. The beautiful Mrs. Mark Blake brings suit against the now famous Gregory Compton——”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Gregory shortly. But he was disturbed nevertheless.
“But there’s no nonsense in the idea that your own ore bodies may be just over the border. Why don’t you sink a shaft, just for nuts.”